Tuesday, November 15, 2011

I have no idea why Amazon has hiked the price of the softcover up to some ridiculous amount, but if you are interested in a more reasonably priced copy, please email me and I should be able to arrange something.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Jewish Ideas Daily has published a thoughtful review, connecting the book to wider theories of American marketing.

Short quote: "This book almost explodes with fascinating information about Haredi authors, critics, and debates in the pages of magazines unknown to outsiders. Finkelman may have set out to describe the contribution of Haredi popular culture to the propagation of Haredism, but what he's done is to write an approachable, responsible introduction to Haredi life that demystifies many of its aspects."

Outwardly, it seems that the Haredi community remains faithful to Torah as it understands it, while maintaining maximal opposition to modernity. Is that true? A new book focuses on some profound recent changes in the Haredi community. What does that teach us about our own religious Zionist path?

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Rabbi Yonah Goodman, a fascinating educator who works at the Orot College in Israel and writes on the Religious-Zionist website Kipa, sees the American Haredi model described in SKR as parallel in many ways to what is happening within Religious Zionism. I agree, though there are certain differences. (If I get permission, I'll post a translation of his review here.)

Strictly Kosher Reading

For centuries, fervently observant Jewish communities have produced thousands of works of Jewish law, thought, and spirituality. But in recent decades, the literature of America's Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] community has taken on brand-new forms: self-help books, cookbooks, monthly magazines, parenting guides, biographies, picture books, even adventure stories and spy novels -- all produced by Haredi men and women, for the Haredi reader. What's changed? Why did these works appear, and what do they mean to the community that produces and consumes them? How has the Haredi world, as it seeks fidelity to unchanging tradition, so radically changed what it writes and what it reads? In answering these questions, Strictly Kosher Reading points to a central paradox in contemporary Haredi life. Haredi Jewry sets itself apart, claiming to reject modern secular culture as dangerous and as threatening to everything Torah stands for. But in practice, Haredi popular literature reveals a community thoroughly embedded in contemporary values. Popular literature plays a critical role in helping Haredi Jews to understand themselves as different, even as it shows them to be very much the same.

About Me

I am a lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, as well as a teacher of Torah, mostly to adult women in Jerusalem. I live in Beit Shemesh with my wife and five children. My book, Strictly Kosher Reading: Popular Literature and the Condition of Contemporary Orthodoxy, appeared in 2011 from Academic Studies Press.